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Reviews
Unsettled Boundaries: Fraser Gold and the British-American Northwest
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By Robert Ficken
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Washington State University Press, Pullman, 2003. Illustrations, maps, notes, index. 208 pages. $19.95 paper.
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Reviewed by Melinda Marie Jetté
Western Oregon University, Monmouth
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| In this slim volume, Robert Ficken high-lights the importance of transboundary perspectives in Pacific Northwest history. As Ficken notes in the introduction, his objective is to dispel a common misconception — initially recorded by unsuccessful American miners — that the Fraser Gold Rush that began in 1858 "represented a terminal humbug" rather than "an essential event in regional development" (p. 2). Ficken succeeds on this point, yet his tendency to view the events in the Fraser Canyon from the vantage point of American miners ultimately weakens his narrative. |
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Unsettled Boundaries opens with an overview of the geography of the Fraser River, fur-trade activity in New Caledonia (mainland British Columbia), the activities of the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC), and social and economic developments in Washington Territory. In succeeding chapters, Ficken examines the HBC's initial reaction to the discovery of gold in Fraser Canyon, the migration of thousands of American miners and merchants to Victoria, B.C., and the economic transformation that this mass migration engendered. The second half of the book recounts the events in the Fraser Canyon through 1860 and their effect on the political and economic landscape of the new British colony of British Columbia. Ficken argues that the gold rush was a central factor in the creation of this new colony because the influx of thousands of Americans forced British officials to protect British sovereignty north of the forty-ninth parallel. |
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Among the strengths of this volume is the author's commitment to transnational perspectives that guide his focus on HBC officials and American miners and entrepreneurs. Although a few individuals stand out — such as HBC chief factor and later colonial governor James Douglas —Unsettled Boundaries is primarily a portrait of collective behavior and group culture. The first three chapters constitute the strongest portion of the book. Here Ficken skillfully mines newspapers and other published accounts to probe the experiences, ambitions, and mentalités of the Americans en route to the Fraser Canyon. This familiarity with the documentary source record, coupled with Ficken's polished, engaging prose, makes for fascinating reading. |
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Despite Ficken's attention to detail and his familiarity with Euro-American sources, he overlooks the most recent secondary literature on the Fraser rush and pertinent comparative studies. Particularly troubling is the absence of reference to the groundbreaking work of Daniel P. Marshall on the conflict between the indigenous inhabitants of the Fraser Canyon, the Nlakápamux (Thompson), and the American miners and recent studies on the Euro-Canadian colonization of British Columbia by historical geographer Cole Harris. Equally troubling is the absence of reference to studies on western mining frontiers, such as E.A. Swartz's The Rogue River Indian War and Its Aftermath (1997) and Elliot West's The Contested Plains (1998). |
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This lack of reference to the secondary literature leads Ficken to serious missteps in his treatment of events in the Fraser Canyon. Adopting the perspective of the miners, Ficken largely treates Native peoples of the Pacific Northwest as generic Indians, with little sensitivity to their differing identities and cultural traditions. He elects not to utilize Euro-American and aboriginal sources that could have provided insight into the viewpoints of the Native peoples whose lands were invaded, appropriated, and degraded by the American miners. Indeed, rather than fully analyzing the genocidal tendencies inherent in the culture of the California miners, Ficken downplays the violence between Americans and various Native groups in the borderlands region. Given the swath of destruction wrought by American miners on the Indian peoples of California, Washington, and Oregon, Ficken's limited treatment of this dynamic in the British Columbia context is especially problematic. Was not this aspect of Euro-American colonialism a fundamental component of regional development in the Pacific Northwest? |
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